The Exchange Team is pleased to announce that in the first quarter of calendar year 2013 we will be releasing Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 (SP3) to our customers. With SP3, the following new features and capabilities will be included:

Support for Windows Server 2012: With Service Pack 3, you will have the ability to install and deploy Exchange Server 2010 on machines running Windows Server 2012.

Customer Requested Fixes: All fixes contained within update rollups released prior to Service Pack 3 will also be contained within SP3. Details of our regular Exchange 2010 release rhythm can be found in Exchange 2010 Servicing.

In order to support these newly added features, there will be a requirement for customers to update their Active Directory schema. We are communicating the required changes ahead of the release date in order to assist our customers with planning their upgrade path ahead of time.

We hope these announcements come as welcome news to you. It is our custom to provide ongoing improvements to features, functionality and security of Exchange Server, based largely on customer feedback, and to provide continual innovation on an already great messaging product. We look forward to receiving your comments and announcing more detailed information as we continue to develop the features that will be included in SP3.

Thanks Kevin. Does this mean that Exchange 2013 will no longer RTM in calendar year 2012?

And by coexistence, do you mean long-term coexistence - as in orgs wishing to move immediately from 2010 to 2013 would be able to do so with sp2 - or any migration scenario whatsoever will require sp3 to move forward?

It is disappointing that SP3 won't be available until first half of next year for 2013 co-existence support. To me that means tha either 2013 will be released without any upgrade path or that RTM will be delayed until mid next year or longer. I'm sad...

Seriously...I wanted to move to Exchange 2013 very quickly (we're on Exchange 2010 and I like to stay current)...you're telling me that project I started up to begin building Exchange 2013 in November will now have to be put on hold until June?

Re: Brian. While Lync 2013 has some feature integration unique to Exchange 2013, it's not required to have E2013 in place before or even after to have L2013.

Even once E2013 releases, good chance you'll be waiting 1-9 months for backup software systems, RIM, Good or any other Exchange dependant application to "catch up". Though hopefully they are a little more on the ball this time with E2013 readiness... hopefully.

If Exchange team delivers Exchange 2013 RTM by the end of this year, it may effect new deployments only which is less than 10% on average. Until Exchange team provide an update (they said it's SP3) to support coexistence with 2013 RTM, we can't really deploy it even in lab! Since SP3 is scheduled to release by 1st quarter of 2013, we can't really start the deployment of Exchange 2013!

What I'm expecting from Exchange Team is ... a much quicker update to support coexistence with Exchange 2013 if they are going to release Exchange 2013 RTM by the end of this year!

The documentation on-line for Exchange Server 2013 says it is currently incompatible with Exchange 2010 and 2007 but will be compatible from RTM. If this is true then Exchange Server 2013 will not ship this year as Exchange 2010 SP3 is not due until H1 (not Q1) of 2013.

If plans have changed for compatibility (IE ES2013 won't be compatible with ES2010 and ES2007 from RTM) then you won't be able to implement ES2013, except in a new, clean network, until ES2010 SP3 ships which may not be until June next year!

technet.microsoft.com/.../aa996719(v=exchg.150).aspx states Exchange 2013 Preview cannot coexist with 2003/2007/2010, which is still correct as the Preview version was only meant to be tried out in a lab by itself.

While still subject to change until RTM is declared; at this time only Exchange 2013 RTM will have support for co-existence with 2007/2010. The legacy versions will have to be at certain versions for coexistence to be supported, and this blog article states

@Vinícius Ferrão, you can not upgarde the OS while Exchange is installed, you will have to uninstall Exchange and then upgarde the OS and then reinstall Exchange or just place the new OS on a new machine. and then install Exchange Server.

I know your hands are tied somewhat, but I think people would like to know roughly what the timeframe is for all this. Will Ex2010 sp3 be released concurrently with Ex2013 RTM, or will there be a lag between these releases? Is Ex2013 on track for release in 2012, or has it slipped to 2013 as this article seems to be hinting at?

Also, I know you are not going to have inplace upgrade from E2010 to E2013, but could you though an option that we can install E2013 server as a member of the E2010 DAG. Then Exchange take care of the replication. And then we can start replacing E2010 servers with E2013. What a great feature for SP3 ! :D

I find this odd. 2013 is RTM and available December 1st ... but we wont be able to migrate to it until sometime in the first half of the year?

Combine this with System Manager SP1 not being available for a solid 6 months after Server 2012 ... and it's starting to feel like this all should have waiting until ... 2013. Clients can't migrate to Exchange 2013 yet.... they can't support server 2012 with their system center solutions yet .... it's like all these cool things are getting released (server 2012 and exchange 2013) and no one will be able to deploy it because Microsoft didn't line up the rest of the products.

I fully agree. Now when Server 2012 is out for more than 2 months I still cannot use HYPERV 2012 only because SCVMM 2012 does not support HYPERV 2012! This is ridiculous! Another example is Exchange 2013. Ok, so it is released now, but existing Exchange 2010 clients cannot use it. Really? Give me a break! At least if I understand correctly we can deploy Lync 2013 and move users from 2010 pool to 2013 - nice work Lync team! They just released CU7 that is compatible with Lync 2013! Amazing product BTW!

Very disappointing. Will have to tear down my entire Exchange 2010 lab environment - just so I can play with 2013 Preview today - or wait 6+ months.

I expressed it many times: I find the SP / rollup situation for Exchange 2010 unsatisfactory. Far too much stuff is still not addressed or fixed - rollups get pulled + republished. Exchange is pretty much at pre-SP1 level, looking at the issues that are still being found and experienced.

I really need this SP3 so that we can begin testing a migration plan to Exchange 2013 from 2010! We are an MS Gold partner and will need to upgrade fairly quickly internally to better support our customer's upgrades. Also that's a requirement of our license use scenarios as a Gold partner.

I think this is a bigger problem with Microsoft and it is very frustrating. Releasing a new version product, such as Exchange 2013 or Windows 2012, but not having the surrounding pieces ready. This issue of having to wait almost 3-5 months for SP3 to come out or for System Center sp1 to come out 6 months after Windows 2012. They need to either hold off on releasing or get their act together.

@Graham541: You don't need to give your boss a letter for that - you can install Exchange 2013 on Windows Server 2012. Please see

Exchange 2013 System Requirements :)

If you do need to explain why Exchange 2010 won't run on Windows Server 2012, you can explain that Windows Server 2012 was not released until more than three years after the release of Exchange 2010, and Exchange 2010 SP3, to

It's not always possible to release all related products together - Exchange Server 2013 has just reached the General Availability (GA) milestone few days ago, and the team's working hard to get Exchange 2010 SP3 out to you soon! It's on track for release

So why bothering shipping Exchange 2013 at all, when the only use will be in a new W2012 forest without any exchange installed? I guess it will be mostly existing Exchange users that will consider a SP zero version of a new release anyway..